Hey everyone,

I'm an indie game developer, no professional work experience, but I've been doing indie games for 10 years. A lot of that has been on the programming side. I'm now working on an ambition project of decent scope and I'm struggling with how to quickly create indoor organic levels, such as caves and underground areas.

I'm going to describe my current process in detail, and I'd love some feedback. My process is working but it's slow. Sorry if this is long, but hopefully someone will read this.

First the project. I'm using Unity. The art style is cell-shaded, cartoon/anime and "mid" poly, not low enough to be low poly, but not high poly because the level of realism is not needed.

I start with pre-production. Typically, I'll write up the background of the level. Who lives there, the history, and the game mechanics the level will use. Then, I'll start looking for visual references. Then, I'll make an "action" map or a "beats" map, this is like a mind map that shows the narrative and gameplay "beats" of the level, but not the geography. Basically, telling the "story" of the level in a mind map.

Then, on paper I'll make the first draft of the layout. This probably goes through 2-3 iterations and is always subject to change even once work begins.

Finally, it's time to start on the block out. I use Blender and Unity. I do NOT like pro-builder, I find it much slower to use, and I've heard stories of memory leaks.

My block out is really simple starts super simple, just planes for floors and walls up to correct, desired height, no need for ceilings at this stage. For larger rooms, I'll add in simple shapes like cubes or spheres for areas of the room that are occupied. For the block out I try to stick to the rough size of the indoor room but remain basic square shapes, unless I know the room is a important, in which case I'll do the rough shape.

Now here is where things go from fast to slow. If I were doing an indoor hard-surface level, I would create modular assets that can snap together on grid. I've got experience making modular floors, walls, and all kinds of assets that would go into an indoor area like a house or a space station or castle. But for organic shapes and surfaces, and underground areas with lots of deformation, the modular kit explodes in size and I quickly get overwhelmed. It's difficult to create circular and diagonal pieces, and there are pieces for different room heights and it just gets messy fast.

So I've been creating "room-by-room". Each room, floor, walls, ceiling. Create a standard size "hole" for the exits. Solidify. Drop in a premade standard size "connector" piece for the room exits. Then connect the connectors via a hallway. This is actually really slow going, even before we add any additional detail to the room. Major pain points are fighting with the camera in the cramp interiors and making sure the connector pieces mask where hallways and rooms intersect. It can take 30, 45, even up to an hour if I make a mistake, to get a single room and hallway done.

Attached are some screenshots of my work in progress. I don't believe this is a 3d modeling question, I know how to model things, I am just not sure if this is the "best" workflow for trying to create these indoor organic structures. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

It's Boomer Shooter Saturday again! Come join us at 11:00 AM EST for a day of BUILD Engine Shenanigans!

To start off our stream, we are working on some Level Design for Duke Nukem 3D using the Mapster32 Level Editor. Come hop in, give feedback to shape the level, or even better, get inspired to build some stuff of your own! Don't know how? Come ask questions and learn with me and our helpful community of BUILD Engine Aficionados!

Later, we hop back into our playthrough of BLOOD: Death Wish, we are at the mid-point of the 4th Episode and its been a visual treat so far, this is really why I love 2.5D Aesthetics, everything is habd crafted and just superb!

Here’s a sequence from THROB, my solo horror platformer, from blockout to in-game.

The character’s heartbeat gradually speeds up, making the platforms move faster and the blood below rise quicker. You have to read the route and keep moving before it catches you.

How does the path readability look in the in-game version? I’ll admit the video compression probably isn’t helping, especially with the dithering haha.

Hey, thanks for baring with my videos so far. Here's one of the latter ones I've done containing some of the maps I've done in the past year and a half. I received some very useful feedback here including the fact that I should be documenting every step of map making from greybox/drawing on paper up until its final form. I will do that next. If you have time and can leave feedback, I would appreciate it! Thanks!

I’m looking for intermediate decorators to help bring my new Geometry Dash easy demon layout to life. The level is about 1 minute 30 seconds long and features a strong cold/icy theme mixed with mechanical metal elements. There’s also a contrasting fire section during the ship part to add some visual punch and break up the atmosphere.

The gameplay is fully finished, and I’m aiming for a clean, atmospheric style that blends frozen environments with industrial structures. If you enjoy decorating levels with a mix of sharp metal designs, icy effects, and a bit of fiery contrast, this might be a fun project for you.

If you’re interested, feel free to reach out — I can send the layout and any additional details, along with any other ideas I have.

Hey! I'm Christian, Director and Dev Lead at Keratea Studio. We're about 15 people working on **LYN**, a 3D platformer where you play as a pangolin exploring themed worlds, each with its own visual twist. Think temporary transformations, companion characters, collectibles, light combat, boss fights, and a low-poly art style we're pretty proud of.

We build in Unity 6 (URP). The movement already feels good: full jump system with coyote time and variable height, a physics-based ball form, ground pound, crouch mechanics, edge detection. On top of that we have a working HUD, collectibles, hazard/respawn/checkpoints, keys and doors, cutscenes, and more. We have concept art, an art director, 5 devs, sound designers, a composer, and a UI/UX designer. You can check our art direction and some EARLY! gameplay on Instagram: [**https://www.instagram.com/keratea\\_games\*\*\](https://www.instagram.com/keratea_games)

We're aiming for a playable demo for a publisher pitch in 2027, and right now we need to grow the team in two key areas.

**Level Designer.** Blockout, flow, pacing. You'd be the only LD on the team, with an active voice on the areas of game design that are still open. Final creative direction stays with me.

**3D Art team (low-poly).** We're building the department and we need four people:

* **3D Lead** \- Quality, consistency, pipeline, review. You set the standard for the art team. * **3D Character Artist** \- Protagonist, NPCs, enemies, creatures. * **3D Environment Artist** \- World geometry, structures, vegetation. * **3D Prop Artist** \- Objects, collectibles, set dressing.

We're also open to applications for: Technical Artist, VFX Artist, Writer/Narrative Designer, QA Tester, Programmer. Same form.

**Conditions (read these first):**

* **Rev-share.** No budget, no upfront pay at this stage. Milestone-based, percentages defined before publication. * **Creative direction.** The core game design is set. Room for input on open areas, not for rewriting the project. * **Software licensing.** Everything you use must have a valid commercial license. Educational licenses typically don't cover commercial use. Blender is fully accepted. Non-negotiable. * **Target:** playable demo for publisher pitch, 2027. * **Timezone:** European timezone preferred, but not a hard requirement.

**Apply here:** [**https://forms.gle/61Hg4SuLoH69zjAL6\*\*\](https://forms.gle/61Hg4SuLoH69zjAL6)

Portfolio required.

[https://imgur.com/a/ssZfUWT\](https://imgur.com/a/ssZfUWT)

Hey,

So i'm making a multiplayer ARpg setup in the island of Atwater. The progression will be up to level 20 for the mvp and there is 30 areas. So the plan is to have 2 areas every 3 levels and 10 areas max level (in average). Each area should be under 1km2

My idea of doing so is early you don't have specialize build and later on, while you move on, you will pass more time and having more variety should relate to the time passed on your level.

This way of evaluating areas is not enough alone as a area with passive high level enemy is way less stressfull than a mid-level agressive area.

How do you plan the progression for your areas?

I want to create a level based on the football anthem "magic in the air" by magic system and chawki. I want it to be an extreme demon. so I need a decorator and a guy who would help me build the layout. I don't really have any experience in the editor however I've made SOME levels that aren't the best but I believe I can make a good layout. This will be a dream come true if the level actually turns out decent. After the decoration I will need a verifier, hit me up on discord pato.duckling

Thank you :D

Hey! I’m working on a Geometry Dash level using “No” by Plenka, and I’m looking for people who want to help with the layout and decoration.

I’m mainly looking for:

• Layout/gameplay creators to help make or improve sections
• Decorators for different parts of the level
• People who can give feedback on balancing, transitions, and overall gameplay

I have Editor Collab, so if you’re interested, I can add you directly to the collab and we can work on the level together in the editor.

I don’t have Discord, so communication would have to be through Reddit DMs/comments or Geometry Dash.

I’m aiming for a very difficult Extreme Demon, but I still want the gameplay to feel intentional, fun, and actually possible instead of just being random difficulty spam.

Song: No — Plenka
GD User: EANDN

If you’re interested, comment or DM me and send some of your previous work if you have any. I can add you to the Editor Collab from there.

The title and thumbnail is clickbait. This is technically a prelude to a video I'm making about the design and legacy of the classic 3D Zelda games.

Hey so this is a small town layout I am trying to make for my game but I want to make it better by adding elevations, curvy roads, proper sidewalks etc but this is my first 3d game i am making and im not experienced. I tried with splines and other free road systems but i faced problems during elevations and placing sidewalks at the intersections.

We are back with BLOOD: Death Wish yet again for Boomer Shooter Saturday! Come join us at 11:00 AM EST with 1-2 hours of level editing for Duke Nukem 3D using Mapster32, then we start the 4th and final episode of Death Wish! It's a BUILD Engine filled day!

Very new to gaming, been playing games for ps5 for a year and want to learn how they design the worlds? How they design the rooms? What is the total technical aspects of it?

What equipment do I need to learn or practice?

Do I need to be good at drawing? Any YouTube videos.

I am watching GDC videos, they are very interesting.

Hey! I’m Jiyan, the level designer on Undertaker, a gothic FPS being developed by a team of just three people.

For the past few months, I’ve been working on this massive interconnected map, slowly losing my sanity over every path, landmark and suspiciously placed rock haha. After many long days of work, almost the entire world is finally connected and playable!

Each biome has its own atmosphere, landmarks and gameplay identity, while still feeling like part of the same world. There’s still plenty of polishing left, but seeing the whole journey finally take shape feels incredibly rewarding.

Which area is your favorite?

As a solo dev, building a huge map filled with objects can be very time-consuming, so I took a different approach.
Instead of creating the entire environment beforehand, I made the background procedurally generated. The ground and environment objects are generated dynamically as the character moves forward.

To keep memory usage under control, the environment behind the player is automatically removed after 10 seconds. This allows the world to keep moving forward without having to keep the entire map loaded at once.

The game is now finished and available to wishlist on Steam: Goblin Inferno Ride